February 01, 2006

Libby's Ocean of Motions, Part Two

RawStory has a copy of Fitzgerald's response to Libby's lawyers, so I thought I'd do a document dump of what it tells us.

First off, the big news (noted in my last Libby's Ocean of Motions post) that Fitzgerald knows that not all emails were saved. Gee, you think? Like maybe an email from Rove to Hadley?

Next, apparently Joseph Tate, he of the leaked Aspens letter, is still employed by Scooter Libby. Huh? He really really didn't do Libby any favors in the pre-indictment period. But I guess it's useful to have a lawyer who's willing to brush up against the borderlines of obstruction, if you're the kind of criminal who likes to obstruct justice. Also note that William Jeffress, he of the Nixon SCOTUS victory, gets top billing on the letter. Just noting. Maybe Jeffress is the one leading the pre-trial discovery effort, since his job is to sneak details out to Jim Baker.

Now the stuff that tells us where Fitzgerald is going and where he won't let Libby follow, yet.

There's information about what Libby isn't getting. We learn he's getting "all the material" from OVP, where he "was employed." We might get into fighting over Org charts, because Libby had a funky dual appoint such that he also served directly under Bush. But Fitz doesn't appear to be letting any White House news go.

Fitz also seems to be protecting State--or at least that's my guess. Fitz says, "any communications Mr. Wilson had with anybody at any time about the trip is over broad." We know Wilson communicated to State about his trip, because he had to get a visa and had to coordinate with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick. But this detail, plus the way Fitz denies LibbyCo details from the journalists who didn't get the leak from Libby, makes me wonder whether there isn't some merit to the Armitage speculations after all. On page 4, Fitz describes how much detail there is about the leaks journalists have gotten, as if to tell Libby to just go read the newspaper. But he notes that Woodward described the "general timing" of the leak. I'm guessing that Libby wants to know the date of that leak (or at least evidence of the date) as badly as I do. That suggests Libby may not know who leaked to Woodward--or at least not when. And that Woodward has been deliberately obtuse at the Fitz' request.

Fitzgerald says (on page 3) he's not putting Wilson on the stand. Well, why would he? Wilson wouldn't know a damn thing about Libby's lies. But the comment might suggest that Wilson would be able to testify to some details that Fitz is holding off for the big conspiracy fun.

Speaking of which , Fitz says he's not going to tell Libby a damn thing about that larger conspiracy fun. Well, we guessed that. But he says it so much better than I:

Lest there be any doubt, we do have some documents responsive to your request which we are electing not to produce because we do not agree that we are obligated to provide them.

Which brings me back to Woodward--and Novak. He's not going to give Libby any details. Nor is he going to give details of the Novak subpoena (assuming there was one).

We are specifically withholding subpoenas (and correspondence) which were addressed to reporters whose testimony was directed towards government officials other than Libby. (5)

Too bad for LibbyCo. I'm sure there are a lot of Bush White House officials who would like more details on the Novak subpoena--and subsequent communication.

There's a bit more on other journalists. John Dickerson seems to have had some conversation about Plame. But this was in Africa, on July 11. I'm guessing he spoke to either Ari or Condi, in response to Condi's disastrous presser on the 11th. Fitz appears to rule out as relevent Phelps and Royce's confirmation of Plame's identity altogether.

My favorite detail about the journalists is this one:

We note that we understand from our January 18 telephone conference that the requests numbered 13 and 14 were intended to be requests limited to the tiem frame prior to July 14, 2003. (4)

So what were requests 13 and 14? Well they appear to have been requests for details of timing and content of the leak conversations for the relevent journalists. And I'm guessing, but if they were in order (that is, 12 applying to the first journalist listed, 13 to the second, and so on), this caveat would apply to Judy (unlucky 13) and Novak (14). Whoever it is, Fitz is as much as saying there are details from conversations post-July 14 that Fitz ain't giving up. Hmm. What do Judy and Novak have in common, besides they're shills? Maybe the evidence that they tried to help Libby and Rove obstruct justice? Just guessing here, but I'll bet Fitz has some interesting goodies from post-July 14.

Two more bits. First, we learn from this that the intent of the July 8 conversation--the one where Judy had to come to DC for breakfast at the St. Regis? Well, the stated reason for that meeting was so Libby could leak the classified contents of the NIE to Judy. Now, apparently Libby "was authorized to dislcose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors." (6) Hmm. Libby is the Chief of Staff to the VP. Who are his superiors. Hold on, I know!! Dick Cheney! George Bush! Both telling Libby to go peddle classified information to journalists. Nice crowd, this Bush White House.

But, alas, there is no justice. I've long been hoping that the Bush White House gets a taste of its own PATRIOT Act / NSA eavesdropping medicine, that Fitz would use the expanded powers to tap security threats. At the very least, to tap people like Judy and Novak to find out if they were conspiring to obstruct justice. Alas, it was not meant to be.

There have been no search warrants executed and no communications intercepted pursuant to Title III at the direction of the prosecution team during the course of this investigation.(6)

Actually, I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe there is still a loophole that allowed Fitz to eavesdrop on the eavesdroppers. Any opinions?

Well, that's my document dump, complete with no logic or grammar. Needless to say, I think Fitz has plenty of work ahead of him.

Comments

One more point about Dickerson. I've long maintained that Fitz must have known of another contact between a Time reporter and an SAO, since the original Time article says "sources" leaked news of Plame, and since Fitz seemed to believe that Libby was Cooper source until after Cooper testified about the Libby conversation. So the Dickerson leak makes sense--Fitzgerald said, "source 1 = Libby and source 2 = Ari or Condi, therefore I don't need to worry about a source 3."

I'm in way over my head here, but Fitz is usually pretty precise with language. When he says that there have been no communications intercepted "at the direction of the prosecution," is it still possible he had access to (NSA) intercepts at the direction of someone else (Bolton)? So he got what they got. K Street teaser: the end of the episode when the Plame scandal breaks and Carville/Matalin get word their computers will be seized is an employee of theirs going to his computer to erase e-mails (most likely from a call girl he's been seeing).

I highly doubt it was Bolton. We've got a pretty good idea of what the 10 intercepts Bolton went after. We know they involve N. Korea; I think they're likely to involve Fulton Armstrong, as well. MAYBE they tapped Wilson's calls to Niger--but remember, the Bolton ones are supposed to be international.

But I did wonder whether the FBI did some taps. They are supposed to have raided a private citizen's house in December 2003 (before Fitz came on board). So maybe there is a warrant to search Newt's house, or something.

Hmm, I forgot about Franklin. Doubt that applies directly. But it's interesting, nonetheless. He could have inherited something from the ill-fated investigation into Chalabi's spying, too, but I doubt it.

I would like to point out (again) that there is a great deal of information available about how the archiving of email in the OVP and EOP works, courtesy of one of the more bizarre wingnut investigations of the Clinton/Gore administration. I don't have immediate access to the links (and my prior comment seems to have disappeared in the last typepad meltdown), but there is a GAO report that explains the whole process in excruciating detail. It's not terribly surprising that the problems that existed back then haven't been fixed, but it is disappointing from an IT perspective. Remember Napoleon's injunction: Never ascribe to malice what can be explained through mere incompetence.